Chatroulette, the random video chat website that became a minor pop culture phenomenon, has been shut down. The site now hosts a message saying “experiment #1 is over” and that a “renewed and updated version” will launch tomorrow.But what will change? Probably a lot. Sean Parker (founder of Napster and founding president of Facebook()) is working in some capacity with teen-aged Chatroulette founder Andrey Ternovskiy to work out the site’s long-term potential.
Parker said he believed the site could be made more interesting (and that it could avoid the incessant penis problem) by automatically directing users to people who are “nexted” the least. In theory, that could reduce the hit-and-miss nature of the experience, but it would be challenging to execute it right.
How would the site’s algorithms decide who gets the interesting users and who gets the less interesting ones? Would the site be divided into ghettos of interesting and uninteresting people, kind of like the dating site OkCupid invisibly partitions matches users by attractiveness? We might found out tomorrow when Chatroulette relaunches.
Up to this point, only very small updates have been made to the site as it originally appeared, including channels and local matching. That hasn’t stopped it from birthing numerous viral sensations like Merton the piano guy.
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